BOOK CLUB: Gather The Ladies, There’s (Some) Fun To Be Had
Bill Holderman’s Book Club enters the cinematic landscape hoping to counteract flashy blockbusters on offer, with a release made with the more mature lady in mind. Starring Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen, Book Club unites four legends of the screen for a shot of summer silver screen cinema, hoping to dominate that particular demographic like the book it centres on did a few years ago.
Book Club
When Fifty Shades of Grey becomes the book of choice for Diane (Keaton), Vivian (Fonda), Sharon (Bergen) and Carol’s (Steenburgen) monthly book club meeting, the four women find themselves reinvigorated by the sexual content that the novel has brought to their lives, and they begin to see their own relationships develop too. It’s rather uncomplicated affair, one that uses its premise to deliver a story about friendship, independence and love.
Book Club is exactly the film you think it is – perhaps even notably better if your expectations were particularly low. While it’s not the funniest film to grace our screens this year, it continues a trend started by Kay Cannon’s Blockers and continued with Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy‘s Life of the Party: it is enhanced with positive messages and a real sense of warmth. It’s a story of female friendship and growing old surrounded by those you love, as inoffensive as it is charming.
It doesn’t set out to smash conventions or win over the masses, with its eyes fixed firmly on providing audiences that reflect the age of the ensemble cast with nothing more than a good time. There’s possibly something for everyone to enjoy – like me, a 20-year-old son taking his mother to the cinema – but it makes no apology about targeting the over 50s.
Creating Book Club
Holderman and Erin Simms‘ screenplay is serviceable at best, paper-thin and flimsy at worst. It’s a rather blank paper, in fact, and treating James‘ erotic novel as the pinnacle of kinky sex life is a big issue. There’s no denying that the script exists for the most basic, underdeveloped purpose – setting the foundations to build a comedy around, one that relies on the on-screen talent to do most of the heavy lifting.
In a similar way to the rather rudimentary direction, the script gives our four leading ladies the chance to flex their acting muscles, leaving them largely to their own devices. There are some robust set pieces on offer – a dance sequence coming in the latter moments of the third act, and an earlier date sequence involving Bergen’s Sharon – but it typically plumps for the cheaper laughs opposed to something more memorable. Frankly, Book Club would have easily folded without the charming on-screen presence. I’d go as far as suggesting it doesn’t really deserve their efforts.
Keaton, Fonda, Bergen and Steenburgen keep Book Club propped up as the story itself moves in and out of vision. While these characters are hardly the most inventive or developed on page or screen, each is afforded their own storyline and status; Diane is widowed, Vivian refuses to be tamed by love; Sharon is divorced and lonely; and Carol feels that the passion in her marriage has gone.
Fonda is as animated as we have come to except while Keaton takes a good portion of the emotional weight and does a decent job with it. You could argue that either Bergen or Steenburgen are the stand-outs and you’d be more than fair for making your argument: they are both tremendously funny and their storylines have the most pleasing conclusions. Bergen delivers a most stirring speech, showing what the script can do if it, well, tries.
All four deliver lively, committed performances with charm to spare, illustrating exactly why they are still making films today. I do hope that the platform this film has given the ladies will propel them forward towards a greater influx of roles at this stage in their careers.
Conclusion
In a sea of superhero films and at the beginning of the summer blockbuster windows, it’s nice to have some effective counter-programming and Book Club is just the ticket. It’s nice. It’s every bit as formulaic, disposable and harmless as you would expect — but it will find its audience and they’ll lap it up. Whether it was the free champagne we were gifted upon entrance or the predominantly-female audience I sat with, the atmosphere for Book Club was warm, fun and generated a few hearty belly-laughs from the crowd; I mustered more than a few chuckles myself, if nothing rib-achingly hilarious.
There are notably few surprises and it employs conventions like they’re going out of fashion but it will do what it set out to do for its maturer audience – entertain with its silliness and comfort with its warmth, mainly indebted to the veteran cast. Gather the ladies because there’s fun to be had at Book Club.
And whether you end up liking it or not, I’m sure most of us will agree that it’s the best Fifty Shades of Grey-centered release…
Who was you Book Club MVP? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
Book Club was released in the US on May 18, 2018 and the UK on June 1, 2018. For all international release dates, see here.
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